A nine-inch diameter vacuum sphere that holds the seismometer's sensitive sensors has been plagued by a series of leaks since August. The French space agency CNES, which built the instrument, thought it had finally licked the problem. But during a test at extremely cold temperatures on Monday, the sphere leaked again.

"We just have run out of time," NASA associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.

"We tried very hard to solve the problem," added CNES director Marc Pircher. "The sensitivity of our seismometer is very, very high but has to work at vacuum, and we have problem with this sphere."

InSight is outfitted with three science instruments to look at seismic activity on Mars, heat flowing from the subsurface and the planet's wobble as it orbits the sun. The measurements were intended to give scientists their first detailed view of how the planet – and other rocky bodies like Earth – formed and evolved over time.

Mars and Earth align for launch opportunities every 26 months, so the earliest InSight can fly is May 2018. NASA must first figure out how to fix the leaks, including a possible redesign of the sphere, and how much that will cost. The mission's overall costs, including an Atlas 5 rocket to send the probe on its way to Mars, are capped at $675 million. NASA already has spent $525 million.

Read more about the InSight mission:

NASA Begins Tests on Next Awesome Mars Lander: InSight Mars Mission Will Drill Deep for Inside Information Cubesats to Hitchike on Next Mission to Mars

Nearly one (Earth) year ago, NASA's Curiosity rover arrived at Mount Sharp, the key science destination of its mission. The rover has now spent three Earth years on the Red Planet, looking at rocks and environment to try to piece together the ancient past of Mars. Was it habitable for life? If so, did the life disappear? Why did the conditions change? These are all questions investigators are trying to learn the answers to. In this brief rundown of the science being done on Mount Sharp (officially known as Aeolis Mons), we've picked out some of the most intriguing and, frankly, beautiful photos of Curiosity's mountain.

from Curiosity, showing it perched at the Marias Pass just after doing some drilling. While the selfies are used as a public relations tool, NASA also uses these pictures to monitor the condition of the rover in the harsh Martian environment. One thing the agency

, a silicon-oxygen rock-forming compound that often shows up on Earth as quartz. It's an unusual find for Mars, and the team said it is going to take a closer look to see if it could preserve organic materials. Organics are considered building blocks of life, but not necessarily signs of life itself.

Curiosity has a laser on board (called the Chemistry and Camera or ChemCam instrument) that shoots at rocks to figure out what they are made of. But for months, the auto-focuser malfunctioned and required multiple laser shots to be sent, slowing down the science. This image shows the result

at a site investigators dubbed "Garden City." These veins are created when a liquid cuts through cracks in a rock and leaves minerals behind. At the time this picture was taken, NASA was trying to figure out what the fluids were made of, and how the rock changed after the fluids touched it. It's all part of better understanding the ancient wet past on Mars and prospects for life.

. While neither of these are necessarily signs of life, they point to conditions that could have been friendly for life at some point. Also, Curiosity got to flex its drill at the "Cumberland" rock target, which was a good thing as